We are in the midst of an efficiency debate in the world today and inside of our company. We have numerous clients phoning and asking us about how to work from home, what do I do with the staff that I cannot see anymore and so on. There are two words. Efficiency and Trust. First, you need to trust the person that you are relying on to work from home. Second, you need to find a way to track how efficient they are working from home.
We have seen positives and negatives with the recent downturn and virus that is spreading throughout the world. However, from just a business perspective, it has been some discouraging times with some glimmers of hope. The hardest part is watching so many people be without work, and even when companies do start back up, are they going to bring those people back in. What we have noticed are businesses starting to see where they are less efficient and making plans on how to adjust to the new ways of doing business. Because technology is such a strong tool to use in business, people can work from home.
Once you have looked at and thought about the business scale, your employees will need to get you there. Without leadership, however, your wishes will be short-lived. People do not adapt to change very well, and leadership and owners will need to be there to support the efforts. We understand that leadership is under a strain in uncertain times, but if you wish to survive change, some are going to have to put in the extra effort. To the positive side of things, all employees want to see growth happen and do want to be a part of it if they truly love what they do. In uncertain times, this can also be a time where you shrink your staff mix, so you can concentrate and not have to worry about staff members that are not pulling their weight. We know for a fact, based on our research is that there is a job for everyone, everywhere. It is up to leadership to identify the need and put the proper people where they need to be based on strengths. Scale your employees, because they will thank you later.
When there are little to no distractions, experienced staff are gaining speed and efficiency in their workload. The hardest part that most are trying to control is the staff around them and how do they check in on their progress. This is where leadership is struggling.
You can either have an IT system that tracks online hours and keystrokes, or you can have leadership that sets the proper goals and metrics to be achieved. We prefer goals and metrics because it puts faith in the other staff member. Our experience with tracking staff through IT is micro-managing and staff tend to not like this way of leadership. Leaders need to set the proper metrics in place to get through this current way of doing business. Right now, people are stressed about what is happening, but when things come closer to everyone going back to work, we can assume, that all leaders will be discussing how things went when working from home.
This is a loaded topic today and a blog is difficult to discuss all the potentials this new reality is giving us. Feel free to reach out to Future To Now Consulting and we would be more than happy to start a discussion.
